"And your reply was...?"
"No."
Mr. Waddington breathed a sigh of relief.
"Now we have got it straight at last," he said, "and why you beat about the bush like that, I cannot imagine. Well, what I say to you, Pinch—and I say it very seriously as an older, wiser, and better-looking man—is this." Mr. Waddington drew thoughtfully at the fountain-pen for a moment. "I say to you, Pinch, be very careful, when you marry, that you have money of your own. And, having money of your own, keep it. Never be dependent on your wife for the occasional little sums which even the most prudent man requires to see him through the day. Take my case. When I married, I was a wealthy man. I had money of my own. Lots of it. I was beloved by all, being generous to a fault. I bought my wife—I am speaking now of my first wife—a pearl necklace that cost fifty thousand dollars."
He cocked a bright eye at George, and George, feeling that comment was required, said that it did him credit.
"Not credit," said Mr. Waddington. "Cash. Cold cash. Fifty thousand dollars of it. And what happened? Shortly after I married again I lost all my money through unfortunate speculations on the Stock Exchange and became absolutely dependent on my second wife. And that is why you see me to-day, Winch, a broken man. I will tell you something, Pinch—something no one suspects and something which I have never told anybody else and wouldn't be telling you now if I didn't like your face.... I am not master in my own home!"
"No?"
"No. Not master in my own home. I want to live in the great, glorious West, and my second wife insists on remaining in the soul-destroying East. And I'll tell you something else." Mr. Waddington paused and scrutinised the fountain-pen with annoyance. "This darned cigar won't draw," he said petulantly.
"I think it's a fountain-pen," said George.
"A fountain-pen?" Mr. Waddington, shutting one eye, tested this statement and found it correct. "There!" he said, with a certain moody satisfaction. "Isn't that typical of the East? You ask for cigars and they sell you fountain-pens. No honesty, no sense of fair trade."